GOODREADINGMAGAZINE.COM.AU
GOOD READING JUNE 2014
62
Jacks and Jokers
Matthew Condon
In an interview in the The
Courier-Mail in March last
year, Matthew Condon said
this about what at that time
was a projected two-volume work on police
corruption in Queensland:
‘I felt ... that I was in a unique position, as
a storyteller, to try to get to the heart of
this drama before even more people passed
away and their memories were lost ...’
Unfortunately, this worthy ambition remains
unfulfilled in Jacks and Jokers, which is the
second volume in a trilogy. The problem is
easy to understand: Condon is dealing with
about 30 years of policing history and hundreds
of characters. Keeping track of who is who
is a real challenge – all those Irish surnames
–
and it’s not assisted by Condon’s episodic,
true-crime writing style.
What Jacks and Jokers does provide is
a picaresque journey through the dregs of
Queensland society in the late ’70s and early
’80s on both sides of the thin blue line. But the
‘big picture’, as the participants themselves refer
to it, tends to get lost in a mass of sordid detail.
To illustrate the problem, a key thread in the
story is the efforts of the corrupt police who
are in ‘the Joke’ (as the network of corruption
was referred to) to get rid of ex-commissioner
Ray Whitrod’s adherent and chief of the
Licensing Branch, Alec Jeppesen. The elements
of this fascinating tale and its consequences
are scattered over at least a dozen or so short
references (beginning at page 98 and not
concluding until page 365). But this is not a
peripheral part of the story. It was the evidence
on indemnity of Noel Dwyer, chief of the
Licensing Branch, and his successor, Graeme
Parker, that really exposed how the Joke
worked - the Licensing Branch enforced the
laws on prostitution and illegal gambling and
generated about $250 000 a year in bribes - and
FURTHER READING
Watching The Detectives:
One woman’s journey
through Sydney’s
criminal underworld
Deborah Locke
In 1984, with grand plans to escape her
deadbeat family, Deborah Locke graduated
as a constable in the NSW Police Force.
Young and pretty, she looked forward to
her life as a copper. But within a year she
was already being drawn into the dark
circle of police corruption in Sydney’s
underworld. Bribery, substance abuse and
sexual harassment were commonplace - the
lines between cops and crims were blurred.
Locke entered dangerous territory when she
decided to blow the whistle on her crooked
colleagues. ABC Books $27.99
GENERAL NON-FICTION
WOM
word of mouth
RATINGS









AUSTRALIAN
AUTHOR
AUSTRALIAN
AUTHOR
their evidence also sent for mer commissioner
Te r r y Lewis to jail. The history of the battle
for control of the Licensing Branch was crying
out for its own sustained analysis and not the
fragmented treatment it receives here.
And this is where Condon’s dependence on
Te r r y Lewis as a source is problematic. Lewis
served seven years for corruption but maintains
his innocence. He kept detailed diaries but was
ultimately convicted on the evidence of other
corrupt police. Lewis clearly has an agenda:
to maintain deniability, and Condon does not
take him on (though he also stops well short
of exculpating him).
Perhaps the great unsolved question of the
Moonlight State era is the precise relationship
between former assistant commissioner Tony
Murphy – never charged but generally agreed
to have been the real criminal mastermind –
and Te r r y Lewis. As Tony Koch wrote in The
Australian at the time of Tony Murphy’s death
in 2010: ‘Obviously the only one who could
fill in the gaps and put history right is Lewis,
but that is an unlikely event.’
 UQP $29.95
Reviewed by Grant Hansen
62_wom_c.indd 62
8/05/14 12:04 AM